Star Wars: The Old Republic early access detailed

Now that it at long last has a release date, developer BioWare have started talking specifics about The Old Republic’s early access – which won’t be happening at the same time for everyone.

Star Wars: The Old Republic â hoping for a great disturbance in the Force

Long before we knew the game was coming out on December 22 (December 20 in the US) EA was promising that if you pre-ordered the game with them you’d be allowed to start playing it before anyone else. That’s still true, but early access will only be granted on a first-come-first-served basis.This all depend on when exactly you redeem your pre-order code and, by the sound of it, a degree of luck.’While we understand all of you want to be in early game access on day one, part of the point of a head start program like this one is to allow us to gradually ramp up the population of our servers so that on launch day, the general play experience is as pleasant as possible,’ explained senior online community manager Stephen Reid on the official forums .

‘While we’re going to be allowing a lot of people into early game access at regular intervals, we cannot allow everyone who pre-orders in at once.That would defeat the point of a gradual head start.’The next obvious question is ‘I pre-ordered on day X, when do I get access?’ While we cannot answer that for everyone, I will say (as I did in July) that those who pre-ordered early will be getting early game access, well, earliest,’ he continued.’At this point we still have pre-orders available and therefore, anyone who pre-orders will still gain early game access, but as they’re redeeming their code later, they’ll get early game access later. As I’ve said before the difference between ‘early’ and ‘later’ should be a matter of days, not weeks.’Non-coincidentally we found an email from BioWare’s PR company in our inbox this morning, offering us access to a ‘special game testing preview period for media’ for the game – which is apparently due to start ‘shortly’.With The Old Republic’s pricing structure being announced at the same time as the date, Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz has predicted that the game will sell 3 million copies in its first year and that it will probably have a stable 2 million subscribers by the end of 2012.We’ve no idea what orifice he’s pulled those figures out of, but that’s the job of a games industry analyst for youâ¦